Thank fuck that’s over with. May, June, July. Three months of exhausting nothingness. Weeks and days without rhyme or reason, finally, mercifully, behind us. Ok, there was the World Cup, and it did have its moments, just not from us.

It all starts again on Friday night, away at Wolves in the Carabao Cup. Of course it shouldn’t. The new season should be heralded in on a Saturday, with a league match. Everybody knows that. Football has its natural rhythms, and this isn’t one of them. But I’ve made a vow not to be childish about stuff, and I’m holding myself to it. I’m not going to spend the week moaning about the creeping erosion of football traditions. The season begins when it begins, whether I approve or not.

So Friday night it is. Molineux. 19:45 kick-off. The curtain raiser. Ticket bought, afternoon booked off work.

We’re back on the rollercoaster. Life finally regaining its focus. Home games and away games. Familiar roads and unfamiliar turnstiles. Tiny moments of ecstasy and prolonged periods of despair. Saturdays that actually mean something. Hope returns. Belief returns. The new season is here. And so are we.

I’m genuinely expecting this to be a promotion season. I think we’ve a more than decent squad for a League Two campaign, albeit maybe a couple of players light at this moment in time. I’m sure that will be taken care of over the next few days. For us not to be in the top seven come next May would be a huge failure.

So, whether it’s through the automatic places or a day out at Wembley, I’m not overly bothered. Either way, I’ll take it.

I want us to be hated, too. I want every other club in this league to despise everything about us. Whether that’s because of our relentless shithousery or because we’re blowing teams away with dominant, superior football, it makes little difference to me. Both have their appeal.

There is nothing quite like walking out of an away ground with a result in the bag and feeling the hostility coming from every direction. The glares, the comments, the simmering resentment. It leaves you feeling all happy and tingly inside.

EFL League Two. It begins in Oldham. Saturday 15 August. The Greater Manchester town that gave us Carl Cox, Cannon & Ball, Siobhan Finneran, Bernard Cribbins, Inspiral Carpets and Deirdre Barlow. Lunchtime kick-off. I’ll be at the station proper early, Longport to Manchester Piccadilly, plenty of time to hunt down a Northern Quarter breakfast, to have a good mooch around, taking it all in for old times’ sake, ticking off those mandatory Instagram opportunities. Then the tram journey, St Peter’s Square to Westwood Station.

And the walk to Boundary Park.

First game of a new league season. How do you even describe that feeling? It’s like everything you’ve ever loved in life being poured, slowly, into a pint glass right in front of you.

Magnificent.

And you see it, the ground, and it slaps you full in the face. The buzz, the excitement, that overwhelming sense of possibility that only football gives you. There it is. Football in its physical form. Concrete and floodlights. Goalposts and corner flags. Everything you’ve missed, suddenly right in front of you. Through the turnstile, that familiar movement and sound, the push and the click. That moment as you step inside an away ground, gather your bearings, and feel that unmistakable rush of belonging in a place that isn’t quite your own. It all starts again.

Saturday after, we’ll be back at home. Back at Vale Park. Tranmere are coming, bringing with them all our yesterdays.

A return to the old rituals, the old routines, and I’m already there. Walking it in my head, tracing the route step by step. Winding my way down Scotia Road, that familiar pull towards Burslem. Quarter‑past two, we’ll be spilling out of the Bulls Head just like always, intoxicated on that heady mix of excitement, anticipation and Titanic ale.

Into the open air, drifting across St John’s Square. Right turn. The old Town Hall and the Burslem angel watching it all unfold again. Our eternal recurrence. Past Clayhangers. Past the ghost of The Leopard, bricks and memory refusing to fully disappear. We’ll cross the road, wait at the lights. Lemmy to the left, forever mid‑riff, mid‑roar, mid‑everything. Noise frozen in bronze. Bass in eternal feedback.

Onto Moorland Road. Past the Red Lion, shuttered, boarded, but not gone – not really. Still holding something from another time that feels both distant and stupidly close. Funny how places do that isn’t it. How they refuse to let go of what they were. Or maybe that’s just us.

We move onto Hamil Road. The pace changes. For a moment it’s not today at all but every Saturday that’s ever been, layered on top of each other, impossible to separate. There’s purpose in our movement. A bit of swagger. The Vine to the right, bouncers set, Home Fans Only, and that memory comes back uninvited, way too much tequila and a five‑nil drubbing from Walsall, a few years back, last game of the season, they had something to play for, we didn’t. The world spinning the wrong way before I could reach the toilets, me throwing up everywhere. Making a right show of myself.

Haven’t been back since. Probably for the best.

And something happens. We’re not individuals anymore, no, we’re something bigger. A procession. A mob. A slow, glorious, life-affirming tide of black and white. New home shirts. Fresh trainers. History. Nostalgia. Memories. All of it swept into one. Snatches of conversation drifting, breaking off, starting again. Laughter. Predictions. Belief and defiance. Generations moving together without thinking about it, same pace, same rhythm. No rush. There never is. We’ve got all the time in the world.

Burslem Fire Station slides by.

And there they are, as they always are, the Vale floodlights. Raw girders, bolted and braced, all purpose and no apology, telling you that you are almost home. The bloke with the Vale Park Beano in position, in the same spot. Fanzines, CDs and all the other stuff he sells. And you wonder, what about Andy? Will he be at his pulpit? Is Derek still gutted?  And the smell hits, onions, burgers, grease. And just like that, the walk becomes a crossing point. A threshold. From town to ground. From one season to the next.

And there it is. Vale Park. The Wembley of the North. It’s not pristine. It’s not polished. It’s not perfect. But it’s ours. It’s completely ours.

This place, this ground, this club, holds everything. Every version of me that’s ever walked through those turnstiles still exists here somewhere. Childhood me. Teenage me. Lost me. The one who believed everything. The one who doubted it all. The one who turned up buzzing, the one who just turned up. The one who swore never again. The one who came straight back.

And that’s what it’s all about. This is what Vale Park means to me. I’m not here to find my soul, I’m here to reclaim it. Piece by piece, chant by chant. Surrounded by people doing exactly the same thing. None of us are alone in this. Everything holy and right and joyous is back again.

Queueing for beer at the Paddock kiosks, back again. The slow shuffle forward, eyes on the time, working out how many you can neck before kick-off.

Queueing for the Paddock toilets at half-time, back again. No rules, no order, just instinct, urgency, survival. A sideways glance, a quick dart, a gap appears and suddenly you’re through. For ninety desperate seconds, it’s every Vale fan for himself.

Checking out everyone’s Adidas, back again. Names, colourways, old school, new breeds. The glances of acknowledgement between strangers. Spezials, Gazelles, Sambas, Stan Smith’s, Campus, Superstars.

Same streets. Same seats. Same faces. The nods that say everything without saying anything: you’re still here, good. We don’t know each other’s names but we’ve known each other for years. Beer, pies, noise – Saturday’s Holy Trinity. Unchanged. Undefeated. Our rituals and repetitions, all present, all correct.

And we walk this road together. Through heartbreak and euphoria. Through muttering and madness. Through the afternoons where nothing happens and the ones where everything does. Through wins, draws, defeats. Through all the beauty and all the chaos. Through whatever Vale decide to throw at us next.

The new season is here. And so are we. League Two. Jon Brady’s black‑and‑white army. Another stretch of graft and guile. Of noise and nerves. Of hope and expectation. Of believing even when we pretend we don’t. The weight of the working week collapses and in its place rises Vale. The reason life is always worth living.

Whatever this season asks of us, we walk into it the only way we know how.

Together.